Like Diamonds, We Are Cut
by GiuliettaC
Summary: Father's Day, 1941. A sequel to Bells in Wartime. Sam settles into married life. Foyle reflects on his relationships. Set after A War of Nerves (S3E4).


**Like diamonds, we are cut...**

**Summary:**

Father's Day, 1941. A sequel to _Bells in Wartime_. Sam settles into married life. Foyle reflects on his relationships. Set after _A War of Nerves _(S3E4).

* * *

**Disclaimer:**

The creative rights to the characters and plotlines in "Foyle's War" belong to Anthony Horowitz. This story is a not-for-profit homage to the television series, to the talented actors who bring its characters to life, and to a fascinating era.

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**Author's Notes:**

1941 shares the same day-to-date assignments as 2014. And Father's Day fell on Sunday, June 15th, just as it does this year.

...

_'bluebell episode'_ – if you haven't read the rest of my _Derailment _series, and particularly _Bells in Wartime_, now might be a good time. All can be found on my profile page, and the order for reading is:

_1. __Derailment  
__2. __Fire and Ice  
__3. __Where the Heart Is  
__4. __Bells in Wartime  
__5. __Like Diamonds, We Are Cut_

...

OTU = Operational Training Unit = PilotSchool.

...

_Laphroaig_ is a single malt, peated whisky from Islay—a special favourite of Mr K.

...

Beta'd to within an inch of its life by the fair _dancesabove_.

* * *

**Like diamonds, we are cut...**

_Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust,  
__Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust._

John Webster – The Duchess of Malfi

...

**Sunday, 15th June 1941**

Sam was late. Not in the sense of being tardy. _Late_. She'd missed two: early May and early June. The AWOL nature of the first one, she'd ascribed to her excitement at the build-up to the wedding; the second, she'd awaited with an anxious trepidation that was neither hoping _for_ nor hoping _not_ for.

Now it was mid-June, and the Late Thing was still well-and-truly late. Which turned it into a Missing Thing, so hugely absent that its absence couldn't be ignored.

This moved Sam from a state of limbo into almost-certainty that her suspicions were correct, and threw her into troubling ambivalence.

She stood now at the kitchen sink, and as she mused on such affairs, a flight of fancy took her back to village garden parties of her childhood, and to a certain stall the verger used to run at every one. There'd be a big old baker's wooden bread-tray filled with sawdust, and about three-dozen eggs arranged at intervals across the tray. The eggs, in actuality, were mostly empty eggshells, but you couldn't tell the hollow ones by looking, since they'd all been buried so that just the rounded end stood proud. You paid your farthing for a 'go', and then you'd pick an egg. And with a bit of luck, the one you picked would turn out to be whole, instead of just an empty shell.

All jolly nice. Except that _if_ you won, as sometimes happened, you would have to find a place to stow your winnings. And this was never easy, seeing that your winnings _were _the egg, and seeing that the egg was raw—which also meant you couldn't eat it there and then.

The memory of that feeling of frustration made Sam sigh. Yes: winning left you sort of _stuck_ in charge of what was basically a fragile item. Which meant that, for the full remainder of the garden-party-afternoon, you had to watch what you got up to. No more tossing up for handstands, no more rolling down the bank, or racing round the shrubbery. You had to act sedately, like a prim young lady; otherwise the egg inside the pocket of your cotton frock would finish up an icky mess.

Similarly 'pay-your-money-take-your-choice', reflected Sam, was this affair of being 'up the spout'—or _not,_ as Fate might have it. In this context, 'losing' counted as a disappointment and a precious something wasted, whereas 'winning' brought along a dubious prize: Responsibility.

Sam moved into the back yard and reclined against the rendered brickwork of the kitchen wall. She closed her eyes to let the morning sunshine warm her face. _What luxury!_ The summer sunshine. Or... perhaps an egg. These days, with rationing, the lucky winner of an egg might jolly well think 'knickers to the garden party', and rush off home and boil the egg and eat it. Rationing had that effect on people.

Sam sniggered, then composed herself to drink in as much sunlight as she could while it was there.

Christopher spied her through the window and moved noiselessly across the kitchen. Some days a natural stealth infused him, so that he moved with the agility of a cat (Sam was apt to fondly tease him over his balletic gait, but the image of the hunter catered better to his male pride, so he held with that). Today his feline stealth had not deserted him: Sam hadn't heard him cross the room or step out of the open door into the yard.

Now, careful not to block the sunlight playing on her freckles, he stood so close to her—_my gorgeous sunshine girl—_that he could touch her hair if he but reached a hand_._ And that was how he caught her, just that way, and pressed warm lips against her ear before she'd even registered his presence. It filled him with a base, mischievous pleasure. Pleasure that he'd caught her by surprise, and made her give a little peep of shock beneath the contact; pleasure when his arm crept round her waist to fold her to him, claiming a full kiss; and rampant pleasure when she melted into him, returning it. He moaned against her teasing protests: "You're a sun-soaked angel, basking in my back yard on a Sunday morning. What was I supposed to do? Ignore you?"

...

Eventually he'd torn himself away to fishing solitude along the river, and Sam now lingered in the sitting room alone. She lifted up the scalloped metal picture-frame and peered into the photograph. That level, dark-eyed gaze—frustratingly inscrutable. How had the sainted Rosalindreacted to discovering that Andrew was on the way?

Sam frowned. Her arithmetic skills were sharp enough to calculate that nine full months had not elapsed between her husband's marriage to his late wife and the advent of their son. And knowing, as she did, the irresistibility of a certain Foyle _al fresco_, she nursed a strong suspicion that there must have been a 'bluebell episode', or similar, before _that _wedding too; but somehow it had not seemed fair to ask point blank. And Christopher, the utter soul of statecraft round the subject, was never likely to divulge the information voluntarily. So she'd let it lie.

In any case, at nearly twenty-three, Sam saw herself as quite an _old_ bride in the scheme of things. Mature enough to take this on the chin—or if not there, wherever such life-changing jolts of Fate were meant to be accepted.

Sam read the wall clock. Twenty-five to one. The stealthy one had left for fishing relatively late today (best draw a modest veil across the why of that). But soon he'd be returning from the river, bearing trout, and then they'd spend the afternoon in conversation (probably in bed again), or go out for a stroll, perhaps—then gravitate downhill to evening service at St Clements.

Sam wrapped her arms around herself. With less than six months' worth of living-as-a-couple clocked up to experience, they'd fallen into a routine. Yet nothing in their habits was remotely tedious to Sam. Nor did it cloy that they were thrown together almost every moment of the working day. But separation on a Sunday morning while her husband fished? That felt inordinately long—and always, they would fall into each other eagerly when he returned.

Savouring that delicious frisson of anticipation, Sam closed her eyes and turned a modest pirouette to celebrate.

A pirouette that she would rue: a sudden sharp powerlessness suffused her, causing her to lose her balance and spiral into a sprawling and ungraceful nose-dive. With a resounding thud, she landed face down on the hearth-rug, finishing just inches from the fender and the fire-irons.

It was then that Samantha knew for sure that she was pregnant.

...

Sam had already pulled her shaken self together and replaced the hairpins loosened by the fall, when the hollow thump of boots and a clatter of equipment in the hallway announced Christopher's return.

There was no evidence that Sam had had a mishap. The bruising to her elbow hadn't started to emerge as yet, and the abrasions on her right hand, although angry from the carpet burn, were quite invisible unless she turned her hand palm-side up. Sam reckoned that she'd got off lightly. Sporting a black eye would not have been her best look. And the neighbours would have had a jolly time discussing how she'd got it, not to mention how it would have looked on duty. Far too 'tomboy peril' for a public servant.

Christopher stuck his head around the door into the sitting room, his favourite moss-green fishing trilby still atop his head. He brandished the basket.

"Two fat ones." His eyes crinkled with achievement.

Sam's inner voice intruded with treacherous insensitivity: _If he's counting fat ones, he'll be counting _**_three_**_ before too long_. _How will a man of forty-six react to news of impending fatherhood?_ The prospect wasn't something they'd paid serious enough attention to. There'd been no heart-to-hearts; no laying plans for the eventuality. And things between them had just 'been'—though only _once_ without protection. _Once_. But once was all it took, apparently. And as her mother often said (as, no doubt, mothers immemorial were apt to say), _'You make your bed and you must lie on it.'_

She roused herself to take possession of the basket.

"Well done, my darling! Better cook the eggs, then," she offered briskly.

Foyle gave a slow blink, tucking in his chin. Samantha's way of seeing things would often nudge on the eclectic, but...

"The, um... eggs?"

"Oh... the _fish_. I meant the _fish_. Head in the clouds. Don't mind me."

She swept around him, making for the kitchen.

"Head in the clouds, hob-nobbing with the seraphim?" His eyes followed her with lively interest, entertaining piece that she was. When she was halfway down the hall, he fired his salvo: "Busy on a Sunday up there, is it?"

"Half an hour," she called back, disregarding his _bons mots_. "I'm going to put a bucket of water in the back garden for you. You can clean your muddy waders out there, thank you very much."

Christopher trailed down the hall behind her, relishing the now-familiar feel of being bossed. It never seemed to cross his young wife's mind that, all these years, he'd managed on his own without instruction. And managed well enough, at that. Rosalind's legacy to the Foyle men had been routine round the house. He and Andrew had had things running very smoothly—they had observed the standards set them in Roz's lifetime (as much in tribute to the woman they had lost, as from necessity).

Additionally, twice a month, Christopher had called in Mrs Weston for the heavy kitchen cleaning and the bathroom, and to run a duster round and sweep the carpets. Foyle's disciplines of army training also had played a role—it came as second nature that he should present himself as smartly as he could: with polished shoes, suits brushed and hung at night to air; the laundry linens bundled and collected once a week. In general, Things Domestic had functioned with the bland predictability of clockwork.

And then came Sam, with all her bright and heady mix of gaucheness and aplomb. Not very schooled in domesticity to start with, Sam had loved to learn things, and he'd loved teaching her ("Let me show you how _I_ do that, Love..." he'd reached around her at the sink and nuzzled at her ear). All the little shortcuts he'd acquired across the years. And some of them had come in rather useful as she'd honed her cooking skills. One trick of his had saved them throwing out a multitude of pots and pans afflicted by Sam's patent brand of burned-on food: he'd showed her how to fill a hopelessly charred cream-and-green enamel vessel with cold water, add a tablespoon or two of washing soda, then heat slowly, and allow to boil. The burned-on food would come away quite easily, and the Judge enamelware would live to burn another day.

But now, almost two months into their marriage, Samantha's skills around the house had grown, and she was fond of flaunting her efficiency. It charmed him more than anything to see that mounting confidence, sending his lips into that stubborn anti-smile of his that wrestled down the corners of his mouth in his enjoyment of her.

_Sam. His Sam._ An embodiment of happiness he'd thought he'd never see in life again—and on that basis, she could boss him black and blue.

...

Samantha was attending to the frying pan, where two fat, gutted trout now sizzled in some precious dripping she had saved from a pork chop. A sense of satisfaction warmed her as she brushed a tumbling curl out of her eyes. She sniffed suspiciously, nose crumpling in displeasure at the reek of fish upon her fingers. Pausing to turn down the heat under the pan, she crossed the kitchen to the sink.

There, she reached across to the window-sill for the flat silver tin of Gibbs Dentifrice they kept there. To anyone not 'in the know', it might have seemed a strange place to store toothpaste. But Anyone would have been proved wrong. Just as Christopher had shown her, Sam now dipped a nailbrush into the pinkish powder, coating the bristles liberally; then she set about scrubbing the fishy smell from her fingers. After an experimental sniff, confirming they were aniseedy-fragrant, she rinsed her hands in cold water, shaking the remaining droplets into the sink. A few splashes arced upwards, landing in a small shower on the windowpane.

She reached up with the dishcloth to wipe them away, but found she rather liked the rainbow, gem-like glint, and let it be. Peering round and through the droplets, her eyes alighted on the figure of her husband, gamely battling his waterproofs in the back yard.

Sam rapped the window glass. "They're on the hob!" she called.

The tapping, and Sam's muffled voice, drew Christopher's eyes up from his task.

"Ten minutes! Come on in and wash your hands!"

The sun's rays, re-angled since the morning, shone now on his back, but they had competition from Samantha's sweetly smiling face in front of him.

Foyle raised a hand in acknowledgement, straightened, slung the waders up over the washing line, and arranged them with due care, adjusting the legs so that their weight was balanced on the taut line. Then, with measured strides, he made his way back slowly down the path, drying his hands on the soft corduroy of his fishing trousers.

_Two prize fish, summer sunshine, and a lovely girl indoors_. The blessings swelled his heart.

But even as Foyle counted blessings, Andrew's face was in his mind and on his conscience. For his son's war contrasted sharply with his own. Was Andrew this happy?

Andrew Foyle had fought in the vanguard of the air battle for England, and worn his nerves—his father's too, had he but known it—within a hair's breadth of extinction. Now, thankfully, that worry lay behind them, and Andrew was no longer flying missions, which Foyle counted as a different kind of blessing. But, though his son was now supporting younger pilots from an OTU at Debden, still he was essential to the war; whereas Foyle's own war languished (by his own lights) in inconsequence. All his efforts to direct his skills towards more crucial work had been frustrated. That irked him. _Irked_ him, even though he knew that if he'd moved to Liverpool, the new location would have put him in an awkward mess with Sam.

Ultimately the matter had been plucked out of his hands by Miss Pierce's appeal to The Greater Good, requiring him to sacrifice his only opportunity to serve his country in the way he would have wished. And though that put a seal of certainty upon his prospects with Samantha, Foyle's plans for personal happiness had drawn harsh criticism from an unexpected quarter. To his sadness and his consternation, the fact of his and Sam's relationship had put him in an awkward mess with his son.

Andrew's first reaction had been laughter. On the heels of that had come bald incredulity:

_– You'll look a bloody fool, Dad. What in hell d'you think you're doing? Trying to turn the clock back? Look, I know I said you ought to think of marrying again... but _**_Sam_**_? Christ's sake! She's _**_my_**_ age! How can you expect to give her what she needs?_

_– Thhink I understand what Sam needs perfectly well, Andrew. Are you confident _**_you_**_ do?_

It had been a mild enough rebuke by any standards, but in his battle-stressed state, Andrew had been in no mood for emotionally detached discussion. All the recent strain of battle—friends lost; Greville Woods' disfigurement and the apparent loss of heart by the young man's fiancée. This, plus the combat fatigue that had gnawed at Andrew's nerves, and caused him to go absent without leave. All of these things had conspired to chip away at tolerance and reason.

Things between the two men had been left badly when the RAF posted Andrew to his training gig at Debden. Badly… not from any show of anger on _his_ part, Foyle consoled himself, but still, the damage had been done. A moody silence growing gradually colder with the weeks—now turning into months—and with the distance put between him and his son by the call of duty.

Beads of sweat pricked at Foyle's hairline, bloomed, then trickled down his nape. He slid a hand inside his loosened collar to stem the flow, then turned to satisfy himself that his waterproofs were still balanced on the line. Water droplets clung to the leg-folds of his waders and sparkled in the sunlight.

_Like diamonds..._

An obvious enough image, and yet it gnawed at Foyle. His mind began to labour in a pattern to complete some long-forgotten phrase with 'diamonds', 'dust' and 'cutting'.He knew the phrase from somewhere... where? Trawling his memory, he squinted, mentally snapping his fingers, and the words fell into place: a school anthology of drama he had studied as a boy. Some Jacobean tragedy: _'Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust.' _

He lowered his eyes. The mind, so apt at making these connections for his police work, showed no mercy. He'd been judged, and harshly, for his marriage to Samantha, by his own son. _Is that the measure of my life, then?_ _Cut with my own dust?_ For Andrew's judgement cut him—cut him surely as the diamond-dust that ground and shaped the facets of the hardest substance known to man. He blamed himself. Perhaps he should have broken things more gently to the battle-weary pilot?

Foyle pondered on his son's reaction—on the strength of it. Perhaps the mortifying truth of a father's quiet success where a son's swaggering, half-hearted play for Sam the previous summer had floundered? Perhaps Andrew's late discovery that his father and Sam had been discreet about their change of circumstance, engaged in secret while he battled his private demons? Or perhaps (Foyle thought with some discomfort) his own mild disapproval of Andrew's cavalier attitude around young women had rankled? It saddened him that, after all their years of alliance against the harshest knocks that life could send them, _this_, his new, true joy, should open up a rift between the two of them.

He shook his head once sharply, a conscious effort to erase the hurt, for he had kept all evidence of Andrew's disapproval from Sam, and didn't want to worry her with displays of self-indulgent wallowing. By the time he stepped into the kitchen, all traces of his consternation had vanished, hidden underneath a mask of seeming equanimity.

Sam glanced up from her preparations. "All ship-shape out there?"

Her husband wore that inscrutable look of his—she could've sworn he'd taken lessons from the _Mona Lisa_. Sam blinked in soft contentment; then the worry-worm began. Would there ever be a good time to disturb his peace with news of fatherhood?

_Oh well_, she cheered herself, _food first_. She mustn't tip the apple cart and spoil the trout. Today her apron was her uniform… _hmm, will likely be my __only__ one, in the months and years to come._

Sam drew herself up tall, saluting with her fish slice, brandishing the pan; then, with an _alley-oop!_ of culinary pride, slid Christopher's fried lunch onto his plate. Before he even had a chance to say his thank-you-Sweethearts, his meal was seasoned with a tender kiss to the soft fuzz on his head. It often crossed his mind these days that if Sam's kisses stimulated hair growth, he'd be flicking curls out of his eyes by now.

"I don't suppose you realise," Sam placed the second trout on her own plate, and intently addressed her meal after a fleeting glance towards her husband, "but today is actually Father's Day."

Foyle _hadn't_ realised. It was a concept foreign to his generation. For all his earlier train of thought, the date and the occasion hadn't once occurred to him. But times changed. Now he presumed her reference must be to Iain Stewart.

"No... You want to telephone your father, Love?"

He turned to read the clock.

"He and your mother should've finished eating. Rreasonably sure he'd like to hear from the apple of his eye." The last bit came out with a gentle smile.

"Well, I was rather hoping," Sam mumbled through a bite of trout, "to have a word with _you_ first."

"Don't need my permission to ring Iain," Foyle protested between mouthfuls. "Your home. Your phone. Mm, nicely cooked, Sam, by the way. Seems as if my work is done in that department." There was the merest hint of smugness in his accompanying wink.

Sam swallowed and put down her fork. "Um. _Seems _your work's done in another department, too."

"Hmm?" He looked up from another mouthful, fork poised en route to mouth. "Care to fill me in? Or should I use deductive reasoning?"

Sam felt her courage fleeing, and fell back upon the hint. "It's Father's Day today."

"Then by all means, telephone to Iain." Christopher regarded her with patient puzzlement. From chess, he recognised a stalemate when he saw one, and failing further information from Samantha, the deadlock in the conversation would persist. Unless...

_Father's Day_... _his work was done?_ He stiffened.

"Has Andrew telephoned while I've been out?" Foyle felt rising annoyance; had his son been stirring up trouble? "Because if he has, I have to tell you..."

"No." Sam seemed bewildered at his vehemence. "He hasn't telephoned. You _know_ I would have told you right away, if he had."

Foyle sat back in his chair, and let go of the tension. "Right. Then help me out, here. How is my 'work done'?"

Sam screwed her eyes tight shut and took a deep breath. "Christopher. I _think_... I'm _reasonably_ sure..."—she let the air out of her lungs, then fuelled herself again— "that I'm expecting."

She cracked an eye open just a slit to catch his reaction.

He stared at her, then blinked. The pink tip of his tongue peeked out between dry lips.

"Thhhat so?"

"Yes." She sighed. "I think it must have been..."

"The woods."

His gaze drifted to the window, where Sam's water-gems still glistened.

"Father's Day, today, you say?" His voice was absent, preoccupied. Perhaps a little stunned.

"I do."

He nodded slowly. "Rrright. I... see."

"Darling... look... I feel I should apologise..." She held her hands, palm up, across the table. "You said we _shouldn't_ have. And now..."

"Mwell, didn't take too much persuading, did I? My only hope is that you don't feel... trapped by this." He swallowed hard. _Trapped. As Rosalind had felt. _The swirl of guilt returned.

Sam reached to grasp his hand. "I rather feared _you_ might feel trapped."

"Nunno!" His eyes snapped round to hers, dissolving into pools of soft affection. "You mustn't think that. After all..." his voice grew pensive, "what else are we here for? And I'm... fortunate you've given me this second chance."

"You've still got Andrew."

"Hmm." He took her hand in his, and made to raise the palm up to his lips. Midway, he looked up sharply, worried by the angry red patch covering the pad of her thumb and the inside of her wrist. "Did you burn yourself?"

"I—uh—no. No. Lost my balance. Came a cropper, I'm afraid."

He turned her hand, and noticed for the first time the fresh bruise now forming at her elbow. "Sam...?" Standing, he moved round the table and coaxed her to her feet, then set about a close inspection of the damage.

"You ought to be more careful, Love," he told her softly. "Now, especially. You don't feel dizzy now?" His hand rose to her forehead.

She shook her head, smiling under his sweet solicitude. "Perfectly fine, thanks."

"Good." He gathered her against him in a close embrace. "Because I think I _do_ feel dizzy. Isn't every day a man hears that he's put an angel in the club."

"I'll prop you up, if you'll prop me." She sighed into his shoulder. "So. Are we all right with this, then?"

"Yup. Going to teach this one to fish, though. Andrew never did appreciate the finer points."

"And what if it's a girl?" Sam felt the slow stroke of his thumb caressing the base of her skull.

"She learns to fish. No preferential treatment."

"My poor darling. You're quite dazed about this, aren't you?"

"Know the facts of life. Oughtn't to be surprised. 'Sides which, at my age, can't afford to let the grass grow..."

He smiled down on her upturned face, and suddenly, Sam saw his eyes were filled with pride. "My clever girl. My clever, clever girl."

"You like my cooking?" Sam asked dreamily.

"I love _anything_ you make, Mrs Foyle."

She smiled against his neck. "With your ingredients, we're quite the team."

His fingers started on a journey down her spine, and mapped each tiny mound and hollow through the lightweight fabric of her summer frock, until they came to rest upon the rounded swell of her behind. His other hand slid up and threaded through the loose curls of her hair, tilting her head gently so that their lips could meet and meld.

Amidst the nips and tugs and luscious probing of his kisses, he dragged his mouth aside an instant, and she felt the soft buzz of his words against her cheek. "Don't think you realise what it does to a man when he lands a prize catch."

"Well, your trout _is_ getting cold," murmured Sam regretfully.

"Nnnot talking about fffish."

...

The softness of a frittered afternoon had melted into evening. Christopher's contented mood was deepened by the sound of Sam's voice on the telephone, explaining to her father that he was going to be a grand-papa.

There was a brief hiatus, then a call of "Christopher! Come out here, will you? Daddy wants a word!"

Sam's enthusiasm always was infectious, and though he might have wished for quiet time to sit back and enjoy his finger of Laphroaig, Foyle couldn't reasonably deny her this. He closed his eyes and smiled away the nagging knowledge of the mere eight years that separated him from Iain Stewart; then he placed his hands upon his knees and pushed himself up from the horsehair sofa.

The certainty of Iain's unalloyed acceptance of them lent a lightness to his tread. There had never been a moment in their interactions when he'd felt even the slightest hint of a reproach from Sam's father. In a sense, Sam's illness in the New Year, and Christopher's tender nursing of her, had erased all normal grounds for an objection from her parents.

Sadly, Foyle reflected, no such credit had been bankable with Andrew...

"Iain? Yes. Ah. Thank you. Oh, well. Proud, of course, of Sam. She's marvellous. And how is Geraldine...? Yes. Oh, naturally. She _would_ be... Well, your daughter looks in rude health, if you want my inexpert opinion..."

Sam was plastered to his side and nuzzling his chin throughout the brief exchange. He wrapped an arm around her; felt her yawn. Remembering, from Rosalind, the tiredness that assailed a woman in the early months of pregnancy, he decided that they'd have an early night.

No sooner had he put down the receiver and sent Sam upstairs to bed ahead of him, when the shrill ring of the telephone was sounding its insistence in his ear again.

Sam's footsteps on the landing told him she was ready to descend, but he called up to her, "No. I'll get it, Love. It's likely to be Milner."

When he picked up, however, the voice across the scratchy line was Andrew's.

"Dad. It's me. I love you, and... I'm _sorry_."

Foyle's breath caught in his throat. So that was _it_? Three months of the perfunctory, and now...? No beating round the bush? No reasoning, provisos, or prevarication. Suddenly, his son was back?

He could have balked. Protested. _Why_ in God's name did you put me through this? _Why the devil_ should I listen to you now?

But Andrew's tone was thick with fresh emotion... shame?

Foyle latched onto his inside cheek and closed his lids against the stream of images that flashed across his mind: the blue-bibbed laughing baby, slapping at his porridge; the bawling toddler with bloody knees; the dirty-eared young schoolboy with a pocket full of tar he'd rolled into a ball and hidden in his trousers (just because he liked the smell); the youthful Andrew, standing ramrod-straight and dry-eyed at his mother's funeral... only to awaken in urine-soaked sheets for the best part of the month that followed; the grass-stained, black-eyed Andrew, caked in mud from exploits on the playing field; the Balliol exhibitioner, all poetry books and flannels and cravats; the pilot officer, relaxed and cocksure in his RAF Blues; and the hollow-eyed wreck of a young man, sobbing into Sam's lap, **_Please_**_ don't make me fly again—I couldn't stand it..._

_Like diamonds, we are cut..._ His son. His dust.

Foyle squeezed his eyes more tightly shut and answered, simply:

"Rrright then. 'Preciate it. Means a lot."

"And tell Sam I'm sorry too?"

"Well, I _would_..." Foyle offered drily, "'cept that first, I'd need to tell her that there's something to be sorry for..."

"You haven't...?"

"Nup."

There was a silence. Then: "I've been an utter arse, Dad, haven't I?"

Foyle's fingers pinched between his eyes. "Wull, hold _that_ thought."

The sharp, relieved laugh that came bouncing down the line was like an _All Clear _signal.

"S'pose I deserved that," came his son's voice, ruminative now.

This was the Andrew that he recognised: self-deprecating, affable.

"Mwell, yes. You did, and do." Foyle's little finger tapped the mouthpiece. "Care to tell me what, er, changed your mind? Just... out of interest?"

Andrew coughed his answer through a laugh. "Fell out of the bloody cockpit, didn't I?"

Foyle's mind strained to lend sense to that. "Did _what?_"

"Not quite as 'flyboy drama' as it sounds. I snagged my foot in a bit of webbing climbing out."

"You... badly hurt?" pressed Foyle, parental concern vying with bewilderment.

"Fractured shoulder. Been in hospital a bit."

"Vvvery sorry to hear that. And it... ah... altered your view of things precisely how?" Old habits die hard, and he couldn't resist adding, "D'you fall onto your head, as well?"

Andrew's snort was good-natured. "Injury didn't change a thing, Dad... but the nursing did."

So _that_ was it. Foyle's mind pulsed softly with a sweet remembered ache. Well, _naturally_ his son was going to fall into the eyes and arms of some young nurse. The same way he and Caroline... _More dust to cut him from the past._

"You've fallen for your nurse." It was a sigh of something between relief and resignation.

"A nursing sister, Dad." There was a pause. "Marie's a widow..." Andrew's second pause was longer, "... with a thirteen-year-old daughter. So you see..."

Stunned silence settled over Foyle. And from a distance that was more than miles, his son's voice reached him yet again.

"S'pose I've learned the simple truth of how the heart works," offered Andrew. "And for all the times I've read about this stuff in books, it took real life, not _Blaise Pascal_, to drive the lesson home_._"

Foyle wasn't going to let his son sell himself short. "I should've thought you've seen enough of Life since war broke out, Son."

"Yeah, Dad… but too much frantic bloody noise for me to think straight. We shan't be at war forever, and then, what? _This_ time, I've found a bit of peace. The sort you've found with Sam. I wasn't even trying. But it happened."

Foyle felt his eyes prick. "Always hoped it would, for you, one day... And for the record, Sam and I weren't trying, either."

"I'd like to make things up to you. Can I come home? Promise not to be an arse this time."

Foyle's hand rose to his brow, thumb massaging at the temple next to eyes now creased with gratitude and pleasure. For his son. His pilot son. Philosopher, and poet. And plain speaker.

"Do you need to ask? This is your home. Marie is welcome, too."

"It's good to know, Dad. Oh, and don't suppose you noticed, but it's Father's Day?"

"Yyep. Yes, I did. It sort of... 'came up' earlier, so..." Foyle trailed off. _Perhaps address the final hurdle right away?_

"Andrew... The...um... 'arse' thing... ah... hopefully you're sitting on yours now? B'cause Sam and I have got some... other news?"

***** FIN *****

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**Additional Notes: **

_'Yes: winning left you sort of stuck in charge of what was basically a fragile item.'_

I had no idea when I wrote this story, but _dances _tells me that the anecdote about the eggs tallies with practice in some American high school health/sex/family classes. Apparently, they make kids carry an egg around all day to get a sense of responsibility.

...

'"And for all the times I've read about this stuff in books, it took real life, not _Blaise Pascal_, to drive the lesson home_."'_

Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) French mathematician and philosopher:  
– _Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison __ne connaît point.  
_–The heart has its reasons that reason does not understand.

...

_'"Don't think you realise what it does to a man when he lands a prize catch."'_

So, according to the late, great musician and keen fisherman, George Melly, what _does_ it do to a man when he lands a prize catch? Google "george melly hooked dock leaf" to find out.

...

Father's Day. Hand on heart, I honestly doubt it was much acknowledged in Great Britain during wartime. It only really caught on as a commercial concept when I was growing up in the Sixties, but like so much of American culture and habit, probably began to osmose across before then, so I like to think there was at least awareness of it. I needed an excuse to write an episode of fic. What else can I say?

**GiuC**


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